John Stepper brings SOA to Deutsche Bank

08.10.2008
My last one-on-one interview featured . But that's not the only maverick approach in innovative IT shops. At in New York, John Stepper is doing the SOA equivalent of changing an engine while the car is running.

Stepper is Managing IT Director of Equity Derivatives & Equity Finance. After an influential board member established SOA as an objective to improve the bank's global operations, Stepper stepped in. He kicked-off an expansive yet that is quickly moving the bank to a global service-orientation, with a minimum of fuss and pain.

It's still early in the bank's SOA evolution, and Stepper has a few things he'd change if he had the chance to do it all again. But the future looks promising. Moreover, Stepper's early experience reveals several lessons to heed when trying to efficiently get 20,000 feet marching in step.

CIO: Let's dive into this. Why don't we open up by just telling folks who you are, what your title is, what you do, and then we'll dive into the questioning.

Stepper: Okay. I'm responsible for application services for the investment bank. And what that really means is, it's any common software artifacts or for assets for the investment bank; for Deutsche Bank.

It's a relatively new assignment for me. Most of my career has been with equities trading technology. And within Deutsche Bank, I think it's fair to say it's been tough. To say it in a positive way, we're extremely business aligned, and as a result we've had great progress on the revenue front, but less progress on defining shared infrastructure or common enterprise architecture. And that's really my job on the software side.